


Warmth in the Tundra

by splkespiegel



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Budding Love, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 00:28:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,227
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15206807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/splkespiegel/pseuds/splkespiegel
Summary: Two weeks after Shadow Moses, Otacon tracks down Snake and learns the ins and outs of living in the middle of the Alaskan wilderness.





	Warmth in the Tundra

Otacon stumbled clumsily through the snow, one hand holding a tiny screen up to his glasses and the other pressing his too-thin scarf up to his face to stave out the cold.

He had _vastly_ underestimated both the harshness of the Alaskan snow and the difficulty of tracking down a man who didn’t want to be found. He had spent months holed up in his little lab on Shadow Moses Island, working away at Metal Gear REX with no concern for anything else – his hair had even started growing in grey from the stress of his work and his exclusive diet of plain instant ramen and black coffee. The cold weather wasn’t something he needed to concern himself with until now, and having had only a few hours to scrounge up anything he could take with him before he was airlifted off of the island, he was less than prepared. His thin jackets, layered over his lab coat, did almost nothing to protect him from the chill; his scarf may as well have been mosquito netting. The only thing keeping him going was the drive to _find Snake._

Otacon couldn’t quite understand what it was that drew him to Snake. He was used to being able to break everything down into numbers, logic, a scientific explanation. The force that connected the two of them was something that defied all reason. The closest thing he could compare it to, though still painfully inadequate, was how he felt about E.E. He felt some obligation to follow him, to look out for him in any way he could. But there was something else underneath that – something he had never felt about anyone else. Trying to pin down what that something was felt a bit like trying to capture lightning in a bottle. It was too powerful to be named.

Driven by that indescribable feeling, Otacon wired a tracker into his Codec to pinpoint the signal from Snake’s. He thought he had heard Snake mention that he lived in Alaska, but had no idea how far away his home could be.

Either way, he had nowhere else to go. He couldn’t stay at the inland base that the rescue helicopter had dropped him off at forever. As soon as he began picking up a signal, he said his goodbyes to the rescue crew, slung his duffel bag over his shoulder, and set off walking in its direction.

Though the signal phased in and out as he made his way through the snowy nothingness between him and Snake, he finally found a secluded cabin as the sun was beginning to set. The cabin looked normal enough, but there was some sort of shed not far behind it with the door hanging wide open. From this distance he couldn’t tell who – or _what_ – was in the shed or the cabin. He took a deep breath, shoved the tracker into his pocket, and trudged on toward the front door.

He reached up, knocked on the door, and rocked on his heels as he waited for someone to answer. After a minute or two, he knocked again. Still no response.

Otacon fished the tracker out of his pocket and tapped the screen until the display came back to life. It was reading Snake’s Codec signal inside the cabin, so Snake had to be in there. He strained his ears to try to eavesdrop on whatever was going on inside.

He could pick out some vague shuffling and scratching noises not far from the other side of the door. It sounded a bit like the kennel back on Shadow Moses – were there dogs running loose inside?

Otacon expected the door to be locked, but the knob turned when he grabbed it. The door itself was stubborn – it may have been unlocked, but he had to throw his entire weight against it for it to even budge. The fifth time he rammed it the door finally burst open, and with nothing left to support his weight Otacon fell face first into the cabin.

Before he could peel himself off the ground and assess the situation, he was overrun by dogs.

Otacon squealed in fear, tensing as he prepared for sharp teeth and claws to tear into him, but all the dogs did was sniff at his clothes and lick his hair. He managed to sit up and open his eyes, counting at least twenty dogs in the room all trying to get a good look at him. He shooed away the closest ones and stumbled to his feet, trying to get a feel for the rest of the room.

The first thing he noticed was the smell – now that his face wasn’t being consumed by husky fur, the stench of alcohol assaulted his senses. His hands flew up to cover his nose. He never could stand that smell.

Finally, his eyes rested on a figure lying on the floor. He felt his heart drop into his stomach as he caught sight of a mess of brown hair and a sharp jawline that he wouldn’t mistake anywhere.

He pushed through the hoard of dogs still crowding around him and fell to his knees in front of Snake. A few of the dogs followed him, pawing at their master’s chest and whining as Otacon panicked. He pressed his fingers against Snake’s neck and was relieved to feel a steady thrumming against them. He was alive at least, just drunk and unconscious.

Otacon knew the procedure: ever since he was a kid he’d had to deal with his father whenever he would get too drunk to think straight. His stepmother refused to have anything to do with him once he was that beside himself, which left clean-up duty to him. Once in a while he would be lucky enough to find Huey passed out already, which expedited things. Just drag him off to his bedroom, clean up whatever mess he’d made, and put E.E. to bed before he woke up again.

Snake was, unsurprisingly, much heavier than Huey ever was. Otacon had to summon every ounce of strength in his body to drag him through the living room and towards what he assumed was Snake’s bedroom. He kicked the door open and, spotting a bed nestled in the corner, dragged him the rest of the way towards it.

Once he managed to wrestle Snake onto the mattress and throw one of the covers at the foot of the bed over him, Otacon set out to the living room to assess the dog situation. He counted twenty four huskies in the room, which was far more than were ever kept in the kennels on Shadow Moses. He had no idea how to wrangle them. Just as he was wandering towards the kitchen to collect himself, he noticed that the huskies were… following him?

_Maybe they picked up my scent off of Snake,_ Otacon thought. That would explain why they weren’t tearing out his throat to protect their master. Experimentally, he made his way toward the back entrance of the cabin. All the dogs tailed him to the door.

“So far so good,” he mumbled. The back door was nowhere near as difficult to open as the front – it came open with one gentle push, but Otacon didn’t have enough time to appreciate it before every single one of the huskies was barreling past him and toward the shed – kennel? – out back. He ran after them, nearly slipping and falling along the way as the winter air stung his skin again.

All of the dogs had squeezed in through the kennel’s door and were waiting patiently for Otacon to catch up. He was intending to just close and lock the door, but noticed as he was about to swing it shut that their food and water bowls were empty.

“That won’t do,” Otacon said. He glanced around the kennel until he spotted the containers of dog food Snake had stored in the corner. He popped one of them open and filled each dog’s bowl. The way they jumped over each other in excitement brought a tiny smile to his face.

Careful not to trip again, Otacon went back inside the cabin and rooted around the kitchen until he found a large jug under the sink. He filled it with water from the tap and lugged it back out with him to fill the dogs’ water bowls.

Once he had closed the kennel door and retreated back to the relative warmth of the cabin, Otacon set to work tidying up. The living room wasn’t quite as bad as the smell had led him to believe, but there was still a fair number of empty bottles and cans scattered throughout it. All of the containers filled up the rest of the space in the trash can, but Otacon realized just as he was tying off the bag that he had no idea how he would dispose of trash in the middle of a snowy wasteland. He left the bag in the kitchen for Snake to deal with whenever he came to.

Lacking anything else to do, he dragged a chair from the kitchen into Snake’s bedroom and sat down in the corner near the bed. Snake was still out cold, but his breathing was steady and strong.

In the silence, Otacon was suddenly struck by just how much his life had changed now that Snake was in it. He was free from the nuclear arms race that had poisoned his family for three generations, all because of one man who had seen real value in him. Everyone else in his life had valued his intelligence and his prowess with weapons development above all else – it didn’t matter who Hal Emmerich was, they just needed someone to design their war machine. Snake had seen something different. He had seen a cagey yet capable man who could overcome all odds and do _good_ for the world instead of building playthings for evil.

He wiped away the tears that pricked at his eyes and set his focus entirely on Snake. He would need to be there for him when he finally came to.

 

\---

 

Otacon woke up hours later to Snake shaking him by the shoulders hard enough to give him whiplash. He rubbed at his eyes under his glasses and mumbled something incoherent as he tried to reboot all of his mental faculties. Snake was still just a blur in his vision, and though Otacon could tell he was saying something to him, it all sounded like white noise.

“– find me?” Otacon finally picked out of the static. Snake’s hands were still on his shoulders, but he’d stopped manhandling him by then.

“W-what?” Otacon stuttered, adjusting his glasses on his nose.

“What are you doing here? Where did you come from? How did you find me?” Snake demanded, each question tumbling out of his mouth like a bullet from the barrel of a gun.

Otacon struggled to think of a response to any of Snake’s questions, but could only focus on one thing.

“I was just…” He started, bringing his hands up to his shoulders to move Snake’s off of them. “I was worried about you, Snake.”

Snake faltered. He stepped back and brought his arms close to his chest, as if he were trying to sink in on himself and vanish.

“I… uh… how did you… get here?” He managed after a moment, still maintaining a few feet of distance from Otacon as he rose to his feet.

Otacon rifled through his pockets for the tracking device and held it up. “I was following the signal from your Codec. Honestly, I’m… a bit surprised you haven’t turned it off yet. Your mission ended two weeks ago.”

Snake turned away conspicuously, trying and failing to hide the tinge of red creeping up his cheeks. “Well, I figured maybe… if you needed something, or didn’t get picked up by the rescue team, or… something… you could call me.”

Otacon nearly dropped the tracker as he realized that he could have just _called Snake’s Codec_ rather than going through the trouble of hashing together a device to follow its signal. Snake seemed too preoccupied with the fact that Otacon was in his bedroom to come to the same realization.

Snake abruptly turned around and walked out of the room. Otacon, at a loss for what to do, followed him.

The first thing Snake did was start a pot of coffee in the kitchen. He added enough water for one cup, paused, glanced back at Otacon, and poured more water in before turning the machine on.

As the coffee brewed, he threw on the biggest, fluffiest parka Otacon had seen in his life and made his way out the back door. Otacon trailed behind him, thankful he hadn’t taken off any of his layers since he’d found Snake’s cabin.

“So, uhm… why all the dogs?” Otacon asked as Snake unlatched the door to the dog kennel.

“I’m a musher,” Snake replied. He stopped a few feet in the door, seeming to realize something, and spoke up again. “Did you feed them while I was out? Their bowls aren’t empty yet.”

“W-well, yeah, they had all gotten into the house when I got here, and when I led them back out their bowls were empty.” Otacon said. “Should I… not have?”

“It’s fine. I’m just surprised they let you do that.”

“What are all their names?” Otacon asked. “They’re gorgeous, by the way.”

Snake failed to hide his blush again as he pointed out and named each of the twenty four dogs in the kennel. Otacon caught three familiar names in the mix: there was a MacReady, a Childs, and a Clark among them.

Otacon giggled when he noticed the pattern. “Snake, do you really want to be reminded of _The Thing_ when you already live in a place like this?”

“It’s…!” Snake stammered. “It’s… a good movie is all. It’s not like I’m going to dig up any shape-shifting aliens around here.”

“That’s true.”

Once they locked up the kennel and went back inside, Snake pulled two chipped mugs out of a cabinet and poured coffee for himself and Otacon. Otacon chugged it down black on instinct just as Snake held out a jug of milk from the fridge. He put it back awkwardly and drank his own coffee in silence.

“So… where’s Meryl?” Otacon asked, still holding his empty mug. It had been bothering him since he’d sat down in Snake’s room before falling asleep – it had certainly seemed like the two of them were planning on staying together for a while after escaping.

Snake winced mid-sip at the question. “She, uh…” He started, his face twisting into a grimace as he thought. “She left. To go back to the continental U.S.”

“She left so soon? Why?”

“We realized that we didn’t really… work like that,” Snake said. His eyes were fixed firmly on the last dregs of coffee in the bottom of his mug. “Romantically, I mean. That, and she didn’t really like the Alaskan tundra lifestyle. Too isolated.”

Otacon gingerly placed his mug into the sink among the built up unwashed dishes already there, making a mental note to wash some of them later. “Have you been alright since she’s been gone?”

“I’ve lived alone out here for a good while,” Snake said. “I’m fine.”

The slight quiver in his voice as he spoke said otherwise, but Otacon chose to drop the subject.

“So… what _is_ it like, living out here?” Otacon asked instead. “I’ve really only lived on Shadow Moses while I’ve been in Alaska, so I’ve got no idea how life is when you’re not in some sort of controlled facility.”

Snake drummed his fingers on his mug as he spoke. “Cold. Quiet. Never boring, though.”

“Plenty of dogs to keep you company?”

That got a genuine laugh out of Snake. Otacon could feel his face going beet red.

“Not just the dogs. I have plenty of things to do.”

“Could you show me?” Otacon asked, the question falling from his lips before he could stop it.

Snake hesitated for a moment. “If you really want to see,” he managed, tossing his now-empty coffee mug into the sink.

Just as he was about to throw his coat back on to go outside, Snake stopped and looked Otacon up and down. “You’re not going outside in that,” he said, waving his hand at Otacon’s haphazardly layered jackets.

“What’s wrong with this?”

Snake grabbed his coat off the rack by the door and shoved it into Otacon’s arms. “Take all of those off and put this on. It’ll do a hell of a lot more than everything you’re wearing right now.”

Otacon balked. “W-well, what are you gonna wear then?”

“I have more than one jacket, Otacon,” Snake said, opening a closet near the front door and digging through it for another parka.

“Hal,” Otacon blurted. “My name… my name’s Hal.”

Snake froze in the middle of closing the closet door. “Right. Sorry.”

Hal couldn’t work up the courage to ask Snake’s real name as he stripped off his thin hoodies and slipped on the coat Snake had given him. He pulled the hood up over his head as Snake pushed the door open. The fur lining the inside of the hood smelled like Snake, and for the umpteenth time Hal tried and failed to stop himself from blushing. He hoped the cold air rushing in once Snake led him outside would be a good enough excuse for it.

Snake spent the next several hours walking Hal through his day-to-day life in the Alaskan wilderness. Hal tailed behind him as he hauled firewood up to the cabin, hunted wild caribou, salted and stored the caribou meat in the root cellar, and tended to his dogs.

The caribou hunting especially was fascinating for Hal – he had never seen animals so big in his life, and for a man who had made his living for years off of killing humans, Snake was surprisingly… gentle. He only took down one caribou, careful to kill it in one shot, and the way he cleanly dissected it to take the meat he wanted to bring back home was strangely reverent. Hal had always thought of hunting big game as something primal and cruel, but the way Snake went about it was anything but.

“What’s going to happen with… the rest of it?” Hal asked as Snake wrapped up the meat he had taken and put in in his pack.

“Scavengers will deal with it. Foxes, wolves, coyotes, birds of prey. I always leave some of the caribou behind for them to eat. Saves them a good deal of trouble for the day.”

After they returned to the cabin and Snake had stored all the caribou meat he’d brought back with them, he led Hal out the back door and towards the kennel.

“Didn’t we just feed the dogs a little while ago?” Hal asked.

“Yeah, but we haven’t taken them out today,” Snake said. “I’m a musher, remember? I take them out every day.”

Snake opened the door to the kennel and set to work harnessing some of the huskies and leading them outside.

“Why are you only putting the harnesses on half of them?”

Snake chuckled as he pulled his sled from the kennel and attached their leads to it. “You think I can take twenty-four dogs out with me at once? I take twelve out at a time.”

“Well, why can’t you take them all?” Hal asked.

Snake gestured at each group of dogs as he explained. “These two up front are the lead dogs. They steer the rest of the group, and they’re the ones who listen to my commands. The two behind them are swing dogs, they set the pace we’re moving at. The two right in front of my sled are the wheel dogs, and the six dogs between those groups are the team dogs. Any more than that would be much harder for me to control. It’s balanced like this.”

Hal nodded along as Snake spoke. There was a precise science behind all of this after all – much more precise than he had thought Snake capable of.

“So, wanna come along for the ride?”

“W-what?” Hal spluttered.

“I can tell you’ve never done this before. It’s easily my favorite thing about living out here, I think you’d enjoy it.” Snake stepped onto the sled and waved at the space behind him, demonstrating that there was enough room for two.

“Uh… uhm…”

“If you’re not sure, you could come for the second round,” Snake offered.

“I’ll… do that then,” Hal said. “If it looks okay while you’re doing it, I’ll join next time.”

Snake set off after that. Hal huddled up against the side of the kennel and watched as Snake shouted commands in the distance, his dogs ferrying him effortlessly through the snow. Every now and again Hal swore he could hear Snake actually laughing as he and his huskies zipped through the empty tundra.

After about half an hour, Snake brought the sled back up to the kennel and started unharnessing each of the dogs. “So, what did you think?” He asked.

“It looks fun, but are you sure they’ll be able to carry two people like that? It seems too heavy.”

Snake fixed him with a flat stare. “Didn’t you say you’re 130 pounds?

“Y-yeah?”

“My dogs can handle a little extra weight,” he said. He led them back inside the kennel and called out the other twelve huskies to get suited up for mushing. Hal noticed as they all came trotting out and lined up in their positions that MacReady and Childs were the lead dogs for this group and smiled despite himself.

“Hop on,” Snake said as he situated himself on the sled. Hal hesitantly stepped into the space behind him, careful not to step on Snake’s feet.

“Do we both stand like this?” He asked. His legs were trembling enough for Snake to notice.

“Yup,” Snake laughed. “Hold onto me while we’re riding. You don’t want to fall off once we get up to speed.”

Hal wrapped his arms around Snake’s waist and held on for dear life as Snake called for MacReady and Childs to set off.

At first he was completely focused on trying not to get thrown off the sled whenever the dogs turned, but once he was confident enough in his footing he lifted his head up to look over Snake’s shoulder.

Where Hal had struggled through the snow for most of the day yesterday, Snake’s huskies tore through it like it was nothing. There was something exhilarating about it – not the kind of exhilaration that made him want to curl up and die from stress, but the kind that filled him with excitement, the kind he hadn’t felt since he was a kid. He found himself laughing along with Snake as the dogs picked up speed and deftly avoided trees and rocks in their path.

Something about the way Snake controlled the dogs so confidently was intriguing, too. Just yesterday Snake had been passed out drunk on his living room rug while these same dogs tried to wake him up, and now they listened to his every command. It felt like some kind of mutually understood pact – out here, Snake came forward to take the reins and take care of the pack; in the cabin, whenever Snake was at his lowest, his dogs would remain by his side to take care of him.

Hal peeled one of his arms away from Snake’s waist to wipe at his eyes.

“You okay back there?” Snake shouted over the noise.

“I’m fine,” Hal mumbled, grabbing back on to Snake to steady himself.

Hal helped remove the harnesses from the dogs once they made it back to the cabin. He made a point to pet each one of them before leading them back into the kennel and handing off their equipment to Snake to put away. The sun began to set just as they were locking up the kennel and heading inside.

“What do you say we cook up some caribou?” Snake asked. “Haven’t eaten all day.”

“I, uh, I’ve never had caribou before,” Hal stuttered. “Actually, it’s been awhile since I’ve had any kind of meat.”

“You a vegetarian or something?”

“No, I just… haven’t had the time to prepare anything like that. I’ve spent the past year or so just… working.”

Snake’s brow creased as he weighed Hal’s words in his mind. “What _have_ you been eating, then?”

“Instant noodles. Coffee. Granola bars. Anything that takes me less than 5 minutes to eat.”

Snake looked genuinely surprised at that. He mumbled something that sounded like “worse than me” as he opened the back door of the cabin and let Hal in.

“I think you’ll like caribou,” Snake said as he fished through his refrigerator and pulled out a container full of meat. “It tastes kind of like veal, if you’ve ever had that.”

Hal wracked his brains, trying to remember what kinds of meat he’d had in his life. “If I have, it’s been too long for me to remember what it tastes like,” he finally said.

Snake set to work cooking the caribou. Hal twiddled his thumbs at the tiny kitchen table as he listened to the meat sizzling in a frying pan on the stove. The fridge opened two more times as Snake retrieved some other things to add to the pan.

“So how long have you been out here, Snake?” Hal asked as Snake pulled two plates down from the cabinet.

“Five or six years,” Snake said. “I moved here in ’99.”

“Have you always had so many dogs?”

Snake chuckled. “I actually used to have more.”

“What?” Hal spluttered. “You already have so many!”

“I had fifty huskies. I kept up with them for a while, but eventually it was just too many dogs for me to handle. I gave half of them to some mushing buddies of mine.”

“You seem like you’re doing well in Alaska, all things considered,” Hal said, moving his hands away as Snake set their plates down. His train of thought was completely derailed when he realized what was in front of him.

“Wow, Snake! This looks amazing!”

Snake had seasoned and seared the caribou along with some mushrooms and shallots. It was simple, but it was still far more appetizing than anything Hal had eaten in years. As he took his first bite, Hal actually started to tear up.

Snake jolted when he noticed the tears forming in Hal’s eyes. “Oh, Hal, did I… season it too much, or something? Are you okay?”

Hal waved him off, his mouth still full. Once he had swallowed what he was chewing, he grinned at Snake. “No, it’s great! It’s just that… I haven’t had a home-cooked meal in a long time.”

Both of them made quick work of their food. Hal volunteered to take both of their plates to the kitchen and started washing some of the other dishes that had built up in the sink.

“My couch is too short for you to sleep on,” Snake called from the living room. “What do you want to do tonight?”

Hal perked up and turned the faucet off. Snake wasn’t asking him to leave? He was trying to arrange somewhere for him to _sleep?_

“I, uh… I could sleep on the floor if you have a blanket I could use,” Hal managed.

“The floor is colder than you think. One blanket won’t do it,” Snake said. He opened the closet by the front door and started digging through it again. “I could lay some blankets down and grab some pillows?”

“You make it sound like we’re building a blanket fort,” Hal laughed. “I haven’t done that since I was a kid. You remember those?”

Snake hummed as he yanked some folded blankets out from the closet. “I never did anything like that as a kid.”

“Really?”

“I had… other stuff to do,” Snake mumbled.

“My sister and I used to build them in her room,” Hal said as he took some of the blankets out of Snake’s arms. “We’d take the chairs from our desks and set them across from each other, then we’d drape blankets over them to make a tent. We covered the floor under them with pillows to sit on while we talked.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“I haven’t seen her in a while.”

Seemingly hesitant to follow that train of thought up, Snake cleared his throat and took the pillows and cushions off of the couch. He threw them on the floor before covering them with the blankets he’d taken out, arranging them so that they’d form a solid foundation.

“It’ll be more comfortable than just the blankets over hardwood,” he said when he noticed Hal staring. “I know from experience that the floors aren’t very soft.”

Hal laughed awkwardly. “I would imagine not.”

Once Snake had layered all the pillows and blankets he could find, he disappeared into his room. Hal turned the lights off before settling down on the floor. He supposed he shouldn’t have expected a “goodnight,” even if Snake had been especially nice to him all day.

Just as Hal was taking off his glasses to lay down, Snake emerged from his bedroom carrying his own pillow and a few more blankets.

“Aren’t you going to bed?” Hal asked.

“Yeah. I’m sleeping out here too.”

“I’d imagine you would have had enough of the living room floor after yesterday.”

Snake went bright red at that. He grumbled as he flopped down onto the floor next to Hal.

“Hey, Snake?” Hal said, rolling over onto his side to face him.

“Hm?”

Snake was staring at the ceiling, sprawled out with his hands behind his head. He could look comfortable anywhere, couldn’t he?

“Thanks for everything you’ve done today. You didn’t have to do all this.”

Snake mumbled something that sounded vaguely like “no problem.”

A few minutes ticked away in silence. Snake’s breathing started to even out, but Hal was still wide awake. He had always been like this – something in his brain forced him to stay up much later than everyone else, thinking through projects he was working on and projects he had yet to even plan out. He could never really escape his work for long.

“Hal?” Snake said suddenly.

Hal jolted at the noise. “Yeah?”

“It’s David. My real name is David.”

Hal looked up at the vague silhouette of Snake’s face in the dark. “David, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s funny. Hal and David.”

David smiled as he caught the joke Hal was getting at. “Maybe we should take a trip to Jupiter?”

Hal laughed, shifting further under the blankets to stave off the cold. “Maybe someday.”

He wasn’t sure how long he could stay with David before they would have to part ways. They both seemed to be magnets for trouble, and one day, be it tomorrow or years from now, it would catch up to them.

No matter when that day came, Hal knew he would hold on to every second between now and then.

“Yeah,” Hal yawned, closing his eyes. “That sounds nice.”


End file.
